1. Rwanda 🇷🇼

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch (1998)

Read 9 February 2026 - 26 February 2026

So, quite apart from the 1994 Rwandan genocide being the bleakest topic imaginable, this might be considered an illogical place to begin. I don't want to fall into the trap of viewing the countries I read about, particularly African ones, as solely defined by atrocities, still less through the eyes of western writers, and by journalists rather than historians at that!

It’s just as well then that this is a very well-written book, brimming with righteous indignation and gripping personal testimonies from the author’s travels to corpse-strewn Rwanda from 1995 onwards. I first picked it up because of the title, which I know now came from a letter signed by seven Tutsi pastors to Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the church leader who had convinced them to seek refuge at the Mugonero complex. Ntakirutimana, a Hutu, then transported armed militia to the site. ‘Tomorrow’ was 16 April 1994, when Tutsis were massacred at the complex in their thousands. Astonishingly, Gourevitch is granted a sit-down with Ntakirutimana, one of several interviews with perpetrators and survivors of stomach-churning acts of cruelty.

The book is clear in identifying antecedents for the genocide from the late 1950s through to the formation of the Interahamwe and the ramping up of anti-Tutsi vitriol in the early 1990s, facilitated by Hutu Power pop stars and sensationalist newspapers. It is perhaps even stronger in posing questions about the aftermath of a genocide: how do you manage the camps, the courts, the prisons? where do you draw the dividing line? Which people get to get away with murder? I found this work to be far more nuanced than Gourevitch’s detractors would have had me believe.

Much harder to overlook is the author’s closeness to Paul Kagame, whose voice is reproduced more and more as the book goes on. It is not hard to imagine how one might lionise an individual who contributed to the end of a genocide (after pages of horror, the reader will be naturally inclined to do the same), especially given that Gourevitch rallies against international inaction in Rwanda. But both the record of western intervention and Kagame’s actions in the 30 years since publication would recast some of the contentions made here (paradoxically, the pro-Kagame stance was so unambiguous that it prompted me to read up on current day Rwanda with greater attention than I might have done otherwise). Would you believe it, the picture is a complex one. In any case, this is a book that combines a grander sweep with poignant small details in a manner that will prove timeless. The imperfections of post-genocide justice as highlighted by the author were subsequently borne out: Pastor Ntakirutimana was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide five years after the book’s publication in 2003, released in 2006 and died a month later aged 82. 

The bigger picture: I once knew someone who was writing a PhD on the genocide but chose to end their studies two years in due to the effects of the material they were encountering. It certainly put my own twee little trips to Colindale newspaper library into perspective. In terms of this project, the book contextualises Rwanda’s place within central Africa and I feel shameful for not knowing that the scale of the Second Congo War comfortably rivals that of either world war. Alas, any hope expressed by Gourevitch for a curtailing of violence in the region here has long since expired.